The Resolution Law Group, P.C., is a premier boutique law firm engaging in high-stakes commercial and private disputes, encompassing a broad range of legal services. With a national complex litigation practice and a strategic alliance of contract litigators and law firms, seasoned in targeted legal disciplines, we have emerged as a firm taking on consumer advocacy at the national level.

Jim and his wife, both retired, signed some papers. “The guy said he’d finish them at the office and send copies,” Jim says. “We kept waiting for copies and never got them, and I kept calling him.” The federal Truth in Lending Act requires that you walk out the door with a “rescission notice” that allows you to back out of your refinance within 3 days.

Proof of Security

When Wall Street banks securitized, package, sold and resold our mortgages, they created a system where it is often impossible to figure out who actually own the mortgage notes and therefore has no authority to foreclose on properties. But the banks and servicers are getting tangles up in their own web. Recent events have exposed a handful of banks that are throwing families out of their homes even though they don’t have the mortgage note that proves they have the legal right to do so. There have been instances of two banks trying to foreclose on the same home, and in at least one case, a bank trying to foreclose on a house where the homeowner had never taken out a mortgage on a home.

Loan Modifications Don’t Work

The current statistics are that approximately 94% of the people who apply for a HAMPloan modification with their lenders do not receive it. First of all, you should know that many people who are considered for a HAMP loan are put into 3 month trial programs where their loan payments are reduced. What most people don’t know is that the money they are paying to prove they can’t afford the new payment for during the trial plan does NOT go toward their mortgage. Where does it go and what happened in those months? Well, that is a hard question to answer but here is what we do know. Your credit gets ruined because technically you are not paying your mortgage, and since you are not paying your mortgage you are falling behind every month you are in the trial period. Let’s go a step further into the depth of fraud–the banks use multiple strategies to deny your modification. First of all they lose these documents, all of the ones you sent in go into a black hole and they are sent in to an e-fax type fax machine (a fax that turns your paperwork into a .PDF image on a computer). You can send the same document 10 times and they will almost always tell you that you never sent in all the items they asked for. You can send them certified mail–same issue. Someone signed for them but they don’t have them. So the three month trial period is now extended indefinitely until you can come up with proof you fit into the program or they decide that you defaulted because of your delinquent payments and put you in foreclosure! Here is another bank strategy–asking for documents that do not exist. For example if you are self employed and don’t have them, they don’t care they want them. Another strategy–if your documents are even a month old they want current documents. So between losing the documents and insisting on new ones the trial period has gone as long as a year or more. Another thing banks frequently do is tell you that you cannot enter the HAMP trial program unless you are a month behind. This is not a requirement for the HAMP program. The law is you must have a hardship. The banks want you to be behind because it puts the bank in a position of leverage over you and in a position to possibly foreclose.

What about the 6% who get the modification? Well let’s think about it–if you are in a trial period that means you are behind, so what the bank will do is put that money back into your mortgage and give you the modification. Basically they increase your mortgage to the point where the modification is practically of no actual benefit, meaning that we have seen modified loan programs that have higher payments than when they fell into hardship. Because many lenders add unpaid interest and fees to the loan balance, homeowners often walk away with successful modification, most American homeowners are still underwater. Borrowers who owe more on their homes than they are worth have little incentive to stay, even if their payments are lower. The problem is that most homeowners know very little about what their available options are in terms of saving their homes. Desperate to keep their homes, many homeowners accept modification offers they can’t afford.

If you suspect that you are the victim of Mortgage Fraud, do not hesitate to email or call please contact The Resolution Law Group at (203) 542-7275 for a confidential, no obligation consultation.